I guess right now, a lot of us would like this reset button to exist. Or maybe take a ride on the DeLorean and travel back where it all started…
But where was that exactly ?
Hard to say because it is obviously not a single event, it was more of a slippery slope involving a number of changes…
One of those changes is, for sure, the arrival & omnipresence of centralized, billionaires-owned social media in our daily lives & limbic systems.
At first, it was fun, convenient & an actual mean of expending one’s universe (I’ve met so many great people on them, some I’m still in touch with). Those platforms have now become indispensable & vulnerable to being weaponized for political reasons.
In 10 years or so, their promises of connecting the world have turned into a scheme to make us addicted & dependent, using armies of psychologists, behaviorists and neuroscientists, all working at playing on our natural tendencies, our dreams, our deepest needs & fears to have us worship the DATA Gods.
I know more and more people are awakening to this & are questioning a reality some have tried very hard to had us believe is inescapable.
It’s not!
The more we are to realize this, the more we will all be able to get free from them.
Social Media have been seen by musicians (and, I suppose, any types of creatives) both as a great opportunity & an inconvenience, for quite a while now.
The balance between the good and the bad they do has shifted ever since the Trump election. The fake TikTok ban and Mark Zuckerberg changing Meta fact-checking policies & declaring open season on pretty much every social groups other than white cis-male in need of constant reassurance of their malehood by announcing the changes on one of the most-listened podcast has definitely intensified the debates in the music community.
A couple of weeks ago, just before all of this happened, I shared this on my Meta platforms:
Since I know a lot of Substack users also came here to find an alternative to Twitter & Meta, I shared this announcement on Substack notes…
The post got a lot of attention and seems to have inspired & encouraged many people to act on their wish to leave those platforms.
The policies changes of the Meta platforms, the decision to stop fact-checking & Mark Zuckerberg’s very public wish for more masculine energy in the world have sparked a lot of discussions about whether or not we should and could leave those platforms.
Musk’s DOGE recent actions, that show no pieces of data is safe from scrutiny & private ownership, give us a glimpse of how worst things can get, not only for the USA, but for the whole world.
So I thought I’d give more context to my decision of stop relying on these platforms, and some thoughts about eventually leaving them completely…
A few words on my own situation:
My musical output is split into 2 projects, each in its own genre, with its own purpose & audience type:
With K⏣LYDER, I make Experimental Ambient pieces that require deep listening. The tracks are lengthy and, even if it always revolves around experimental ambient & live-looping, each record is made with a different setup, thus sounding very different as well.
This music appeals to curious minded people who enjoy textures as much as harmony & melodies. I’ve had positive reactions when playing live, even from audience members who never heard anything ambient before but, looking for it on the web, is a pretty niche endeavor.
Arkanist is my instrumental beats project. It could fall under the Lo-Fi HipHop umbrella, but it’s usually too eclectic & far out to do so and be listened as background music.
I never saw Social Media as the ultimate way to share my music.
I first started to share my music on the web through MySpace: it was quite amazing !
Having music easily available on the web was a still a novelty, but it was the first time we had a mean to connect with the whole world & share our own creations for free!.
People were curious about everything and were actually caring about the music itself. It was standard behavior to send a message or post a comment when we’d like something, and to hear back from the artist: the barriers between artists & listeners were disappearing, the hierarchy between artists too (I got to talk with some of my influences and artists who were way ahead of me in their development as we were friends), and we were all friend with a quirky pixelated guy named Tom.
It was pretty much all sunshine & rainbows until Tom sold MySpace to a big group that ended-up doing what any big group do best: ruining everything.
Then came Facebook… and Bandcamp.
On Bandcamp, you could ask for someone’s email in exchange for a free download: an email you could export and keep, which means independence. Setting up a mailing-list and sending newsletters was a no-brainer.
I’ve been slowly collecting emails ever since, and sending newsletters, mainly when I had a new record out or some big news to share, but nothing more.
The casual, daily stuff, were shared through my Facebook page. At this time, everything shared by a page were seen by everyone following that pages and you could actually reach people & have conversations. Crazy I know!
On the other hand, sending out a newsletter is rather arid: You don’t hear back from your readers, you don’t really know what they make of it & tend to feel like speaking in the void.
Then, the process now known as enshitification started to happen, very slowly, barely noticeable, but it led us were we are now: Facebook pages publications are not seen by followers unless you pay for it (I’ve yet to be proven the efficiency of paying publications).
Somewhere in this process, Instagram appeared, was bought by Meta: It was Sunshine & Rainbow for while, then Scammy shit.
Again, it was a slowly decline and it took me a few years to see more drawbacks than advantages. A few months before my health crisis, I started to question the whole point of being on social media (Mainly Instagram because, at this point, I had already stopped using my Facebook page)
Why I think socials are not suited for (my) music:
* Socials main goal is to get their users to spend the maximum amount of time on their app:
It’s how they make money so they don’t want users to leave, not even for a second. They don’t like posts with links that redirect people elsewhere: the reach of these posts are limited by design.
* Someone else owns the contact list of my followers:
Imagine that you absolutely need a car to do crucial things in your daily life, so much that, if you have no car at your disposal, you have no other way to go to work, bring your kids to school, shop for food or go to the hospital ER if needed. Imagine a very rich stranger proposes you to loan you a car, promising you can have it any time, as many time as you need, he’ll even pay for gas… BUT he will keep the keys every time you don’t use the car and you’ll have to ask him every time you want to use it: Would you accept the deal ? (your kids life are on the line, yours too…)
* We have no idea how the algorithm operates & rules are changing all the time, without notice:
It’s bad enough to be dependent on social media’s will when it comes to reach the people who chose to hear from us. It’s worst that the decisions & the process behind it are a black box.
Is it a good idea to play a game without having a clue of it rules, which are changing all the time ?
* Ads feels like blackmail & bullying:
Someone comes, purposefully breaks your tools (here, by setting up the algorithm so your posts will barely reach your followers) and ask you to pay to have them fixed… only momentarily, because they’ll come and break them again.
* On social media, my music is in direct competition with many other stuff that fulfill the dopamine crave way better:
Cats, sports, amazing landscapes, bad news, silly dances, booties, video games, challenges, comedy… all of these and more, are easy & immediate dopamine rewards for the brain.
Music requires time to be listened to, and more time to be fully appreciated. Isn’t one of the purpose of music to slow-down time ? A way to add value to the present by making you more aware of the present… like… a ritual ?
* A post will never reflect the musical experience I try to provide:
It’s especially true with my ambient project: the best way to experience it is live, in an actual room. What comes out of the speakers is fed by the energy of the audience: it’s almost a collaboration.
Translating this on records is already impossible, but the meditative or journey aspect is still there to be appreciated for those who makes the effort of really listening.
But there’s no way a 1 min snippet comes even close.
* Consuming a post might lead people away from trying the whole experience because they might think they won’t get more from the whole thing than the post.
You’d think listening to a sample would make people want to hear more.. I used to believe that!
Now I think it’s the opposite: They see or listen to the sample and think they know what it’s all about, they swipe to the next thing. I know because I do it too.
This is what happens with friends & family on Facebook: you see their post & think you know what’s going on in their life. No need to call them or see them in person anymore… Plus you have hundreds of them to check out now: no time to lose !
* Creating content turns me away from creating music, and it’s not only a question of time:
Releasing live improvisation videos like I did with Kolyder is: Roughly 15 minutes of actual music making & performance + 1 hour of setup for the video + days of audio mixing & video editing + hours of splitting the end video into short ones + Promo texts for each platforms + posting.
This is what ? 10% of music making compared to everything else ?
But this is not only about time: Neurosciences show that we are able to be creative for a maximum of 4 hours a day. It’s not like you can do all the content stuff & then create music… Well, you still can force it but it will lead to bad decisions & a burnout.
* As long as you count on Socials to share your art, you will never try to think of other ways to do it.
It seems to be fast and convenient…The price of entry is low (you just have to create an account & start posting), so it’s easy to make socials our default means of communication. But, for the previous reasons I just shared with you, I think the rewards don’t match the expectations, and that, as far as I’m concerned, social media is a self-fooling way to procrastinate.
As soon as I took the decision to stop relying on Instagram, my brain’s wheels got in motion: What else can I do to share my music ?
Focusing on my newsletter was the 1st, obvious answer of course… but then I realized I’m finding new artists through blogs (and rarely on Instagram): Why not send them my next records for a review & have a chance to be exposed to hundreds or thousands of music fans who are genuinely looking for music ?
I also found out there’s this free publication that is distributed in a network of live venues, at 40000 copies each month, and that buying a quarter page ad costs 100 euros. Compare that to the cost of an ad on Meta that will only expose you to people with brains that are over-saturated with info & might don’t care about music at all.
What about sticking CD-Rs of your music on the restroom walls of a venue the night a band or artist in the same genre as yours is playing. Everybody likes a free gift, and those who will enjoy what they hear will probably tell the story of how they found out about you.
* Aiming for a large reach is detrimental to your music & role as an artist:
Because then, your goal slowly becomes: “how can I become viral ? How can I please so many people ? What trends should I surf on ?”
If you find answers to these questions, you will stop to be an artist, you’ll be a people-pleaser.
Artists & creatives are here to inspire, to create & explore new paths & perspectives: this is what is expected from us, this is why it’s exciting to follow our journey. Chasing fame is not our work.
What’s the point in following someone who takes a highway that’s already known & taken by millions ? We want to follow you on the off-the-beaten narrow path you take because you hope it will lead to something interesting.
Be a treasure map !
* You think in terms of numbers & you compare yourself.
This one goes with the previous one: comparing yourself is a recipe for average, boring art made by a boring people-pleaser.
* Very unnecessary ecological costs
Before taking my decision, each time I posted a reel, I couldn’t stop myself thinking of how much resources this video will use. A video that will be consumed by very few for only a couple of hours but will remain forever on a server somewhere… Like billions of others videos..
* Very unnecessary mental health cost.
I don’t think I need to delve too much on this one as we all know now the cost of being constantly entertained. This is also something I thought of each time I had to post: not only it was alienating for me, but I was also participating in alienating my followers.
* You’re working hard…for free…for someone else… who has not your best interest at heart.
The technical term here is “exploitation'“.
If a video game can be accused of exploiting children, why is it not a problem when it comes to adults ?
These are all the reasons that pushed me to give up on Instagram. You might view things differently, but I hope this will give you some food for thoughts regarding your own situation.
We are all in different, with good reasons to stay and to leave, and it’s for you to decide what to do.
We all have invested so much in those platforms that leaving or changing the way we use them is certainly not an easy & quick decision to make. It requires to take an honest look at what’s at stake, maybe some experimentation if you’re unsure (For example: quiet-quitting the platform for a month, just to see what it feels like), and preparation if you ever decide to quit.
If you need more inspiration & ideas about what to do next, you should pay a visit to the Social Media Escape Club & Dedicate Your Life To Music.
Don’t force yourself and do something because you supposedly “have to”: self-care is essential in those tiring times.
Speaking of self-care:
It’s way too easy to get addicted to the never ending stream of bad news these days and to end up feeling powerless. Music is a good way to pause and take a breath.
The new improvisation I’m sharing with you today is very “steady”, with a progressive build-up and no dramatic changes: the track flow naturally without being static.
It was all recorded live with a guitar, effect pedals & LoopyPro as a looper & host for iOS effects.
You can download it here.
I hope it helps you slowing time down for a while, and provide a bit of peace of mind.
Take care.
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